Nationality, identity and the pledge of allegiance

By Moni Basu, CNN

Updated 5:22 PM ET, Tue July 1, 2014

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – On June 29, 2012, in Atlanta, people from 54 countries became naturalized U.S. citizens. Read on to learn about their stories and what they think makes America exceptional. Among those naturalized were Denroy 'Peter' Willis of Jamaica, who came to America in 1992 and works at an auto dealership. "On the job, all the guys mess with me, joke with me about my speech and how I'm not American," he said. "When I go to work tomorrow, they can't say anything anymore. I'm an American."

Hide Caption

1 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – "America is exceptional in many ways," said Ruth McNerney, a commercial engineer and medical interpreter from Santiago, Chile, "but what it does best is welcoming people from so many cultures, and being able to, with its laws and regulations, make it work with everyone who comes from overseas."

Hide Caption

2 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – "Sometimes I remember, this is in my blood," said Eduardo Fraire-Contreras, who is of Mexican and Apache descent. "I remember the story of my people, of them fighting for land. You love the land you fight for. Now, it's my land, too."

Hide Caption

3 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – Mary Acholonu left Nigeria in 1967 for the United States to pursue her education and get married. She says the United States is a haven for families and those in need of medical care. "I finally made up my mind [to become a citizen] because I love it here. America is a wonderful place."

Hide Caption

4 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – What does being an American citizen mean? "The ability to change your life," said Javier Chavez, originally from Mexico. "It's easier to get somewhere else, if you want to go out of the country."

Hide Caption

5 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – "I'm actually fond of American history. The presidents really inspire me," said Marcelo Painter of Sao Paulo, Brazil, who said he would like to run for Congress someday. "I love politics. I love to stand for what's right and fair for everybody." Until then, his most anticipated role as an American citizen is that of voter. "As long as I have a voice," he said, "there will be people who side with my ideas. Who will understand, and relate. And when there's more than one voice, you have a lot of power to do something."

Hide Caption

6 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – "To tell the truth, I don't feel like I'm treated any differently. . . People tell me that I look like an American," said Jose Vitor Monteiro of Brazil who came with his daugher Maria. Now that he's a citizen, he says he feels like one, too. "I can walk every place and feel like I belong. This is the best." And while he's still unsure of his knowledge of American politics, he is considering exercising his rights. "Maybe I will vote! Because now, I am American."

Hide Caption

7 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – "A lot of people come here because they want a better life, I came just for love," Teresa Marino of Brazil said of her 12-year journey to citizenship. "My story is a love story, and today is a very important day. [My husband] became an American citizen before me, and I'm becoming an American citizen for him and his kids."

Hide Caption

8 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – What does Gina Torres bring to America? "I bring a person who wants to work and move forward, a free spirit who doesn't stay in one place and can overcome difficulties," said Torres, who came to the United States from Colombia 10 years ago to fulfill her dream of studying architecture. "America was really far away. I was so far away I never thought I'd have the opportunity to come until my mom moved and brought me here. It was Disneyland everywhere for me. Everything seemed so organized and perfect. It's not like I don't love where I come from, but it is a different picture here."

Hide Caption

9 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – While she's nervous about starting life as an American, Kristina Arnaoutova, formerly of Obninsk, Russia, said the American people's welcoming attitude will help her adapt to her new country. "I feel more positivity and optimism here. America is all about immigration, too. Two hundred years ago, people came from Europe, it's all immigrants. It's just a difference of time."

Hide Caption

10 of 11

Faces of citizenship11 photos

Faces of citizenship – "I want to be legal in this country for my rights, but I'm doing this for my wife and two kids," said Jaime Burgos, who came from Honduras and has been supporting his family in America for 14 years. "You can get everything here. In my country, it's poor. Over there, the criminal situation is horrible. Here, we have security. I feel safe."

Hide Caption

11 of 11

Story highlights

CNN reporter Moni Basu writes about making her "Americanness official"

After almost 30 years in America, she became a citizen in 2008

Author: "America...is a nation that gives people hope"

When the moment finally arrived, 86 of us stood up to utter 31 sacred words.

I raised my right hand. My heart was pounding. All those years spent in public schools in America, I'd refrained from saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It was wrong to say it when my loyalties lay elsewhere.

But that changed with a ceremony on a July day six years ago. And it changed me. I learned lessons about the meaning of country and more importantly, about myself.

I'd been in America almost three decades but happily retained an Indian passport. Over the years, each time it was renewed, my green card changed to pink and white but the status remained the same: permanent U.S. resident.

I'd lived here so long that I felt just as much American as I did Indian, but I had my reasons for not taking that last formal step that made my Americanness official.

The author, Moni Basu, center, says the Pledge of Allegiance at her naturalization ceremony in 2008.

One was practical -- there was a matter of inheriting my father's property in Kolkata, India, and for a long time, that process was excruciatingly painful without Indian citizenship. My father knew what a bureaucratic nightmare inheritance could be, and as long as he was alive, he encouraged me to stay an Indian.

The other reason I held back was far more personal.

India does not allow dual citizenship with the United States, and assuming U.S. citizenship would effectively mean renouncing India. That felt like betrayal, a severance with the land that gave me birth and shaped me.

I spent a chunk of my childhood in India. When my family finally settled in the United States, I struggled to find myself.

I learned to speak English well, even with a twinge of Southern drawl, some would say. I went to high school dances and loved my Levi's and even went out on dates, something I would never have done in India at that time.

But I never felt fully accepted.

I was always an "other" on forms that asked for race and ethnicity, before the days when Asian-American became a census category. In high school and college, I found myself fighting stereotypes and answering absurd questions about India, such as "do people live in grass huts?"

JUST WATCHED

Obama to Congress: 'Pass a darn bill'

MUST WATCH

JUST WATCHED

Prize-winning reporter: I'm undocumented

MUST WATCH

Prize-winning reporter: I'm undocumented03:46

PLAY VIDEO

Sometimes, I felt Americans simply didn't understand me and that everything would be better if I could just go back to India.

The yearning for home and family grew stronger with age, especially after my parents moved back to India in 1985. I felt a need to rediscover my roots, not uncommon, I suppose, among immigrant children.

But every time I returned home to visit, I realized I could never feel fully at home in India anymore. I was too Americanized. A memsahib, the elders in my family joked, referring to the term for British women during colonial times.

That, too, is not uncommon among immigrant children. Many of us feel neither here nor there, straddling two cultures as we navigate key years of our lives.

In my case, I was happy to go on as a citizen of one country, a resident of another.

I paid my taxes and enjoyed all the freedoms afforded Americans save two things. I never served on a jury and more importantly, I could not vote. I never had an electoral say in India either because it did not allow absentee voting.

I hailed from the world's largest democracy and lived in the world's most powerful one, but was unable to take part in a free society's most essential expression. I always felt cheated, or worse, that I was falling short.

In 2004, I covered the presidential elections for an Atlanta newspaper, and after months of excitement and intrigue I was frustrated that I could not cast a ballot on Election Day.

By then I had cleared the biggest legal hurdles in India in settling my father's property. And so it happened that I sat down to fill out the necessary forms declaring my intent to become American.

I was fingerprinted, passed citizenship tests that challenged my knowledge of the Constitution and was finally called to take the oath in July 2008.

At the suburban Atlanta offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, I scanned the room to see faces from Vietnam to Venezuela. There were people from 38 different countries there that day for the naturalization ceremony.

I thought back to all the people I had met in my career as a reporter, of people who fought for freedom in lands that kept them caged, and others who clawed their way to these shores to break free.

I remembered Cuban dissenters I had met on my trip to Havana, and Afghan women who risked their lives to make things better for their little girls.

Now, all we have to do is look to the men and women of the Arab Spring, who took to the streets to oust governments that kept them down. Think of how much people risk to attain the kind of freedom we enjoy in America. And how much people in our own country have struggled to rid our society of prejudice and persecution.

My naturalization ceremony was testament to the American spirit. I looked around me and realized that this wasn't just about the journeys people had made; it was about the potential of all they could achieve in their new nation.

I thought about the Americans I'd met who worked hard, determined to achieve the American dream; about how their expectations were greater than their fears.

Such was the case with Fernando Andrade, who left behind Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military rule in Chile and arrived here without a college degree or English skills. He started in construction jobs and worked his way up to become a successful businessman.

Or Darly Pierre, who fled the brutal dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. She came to America ready to fulfill her dreams. In Haiti, she said, she never had that chance.

I thought, too, about all the Americans I met who inspired me to carry on in the face of adversity. They, too, championed the American spirit.

Dylynn Waters lost her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, resettled in Atlanta only to lose her home again in a fire. Waters persevered with a smile on her face. She said she had learned that it was not possessions that made a home.

Richard Ingram was a young cavalry scout whose arm was blown off in a roadside bombing in Iraq. He returned home determined to make the best of life. He is the first severely wounded soldier in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to become an officer.

America is filled with such stories. It is a nation that gives people hope.

On that July day, I felt proud, and extremely lucky, to be a part of this land.

I glanced at Francisco Montiel of Venezuela, standing to my right, dressed for the occasion in a khaki suit and blue tie. And on my left stood my friend Vino Wong, a photographer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper and a native of Malaysia.

I wondered what they were thinking as they, too, became U.S. citizens. Did they have the same emotions I did? Was their joy tinged with the melancholy of giving up a homeland?

My eyes welled as I began the oath.

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. ..."

Two worlds collided in my head as I drove to the Fulton County Courthouse with my new certificate of citizenship so that I could register to vote in time for the 2008 presidential elections.

That November, America made history with the election of Barack Obama as its first black president. The election became an important part of my own history as I stepped up to a voting booth and cast a ballot for the very first time.

Since then, I've come to think differently of my new citizenship.

I know now that swearing allegiance to the red, white and blue gave me new nationality. But nothing can ever take away my identity or that of the 40 million other people living in America who were born in other countries.

My Indian roots run deep, and I strive to carry with me every day the very best of two lands.

That is, after all, what makes America great.

What does U.S. citizenship mean to you as we approach July 4th? Share your take in the comments section below.